Input Stories

Most National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health workers who were laid off last year are back at work (POLITICO, subscription).

What’s going on: “The Health Department has rescinded all reduction-in-force notices at the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s] National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, reinstating hundreds of employees, it said in a court filing Monday.”

• The NAM-urged move comes about a month after the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was rescinding the layoffs, but it did not disclose the number of workers being reinstated.
• The administration laid off over 90% of NIOSH’s more than 1,300 employees last April as part of a broader push to downsize the federal government.

Why it’s important: At the time, the NAM told HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the workforce reductions could result in disruptions at NIOSH’s National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory, where the agency tests and certifies respiratory protective devices.

• “The certification of respiratory protective devices at NPPTL is integral to protecting U.S. competitiveness and the health and safety of American workers,” the NAM Council of Manufacturing Associations—which includes 260 national manufacturing trade groups—said in April.
• “Manufacturers benefit from NPPTL expertise and certification as they work to provide workers with trusted protection … [and] NPPTL certification also directly protects workers by preventing unscrupulous actors from flooding the market with [potentially dangerous] counterfeit [personal protective equipment].”